Welcome to the freakin neighborhood

For anyone who doesn't know, I have lived in Kensington for 7 years. Living right on the main street, there has barely been a time when I didn't have some sort of construction going on around me. The lofts on Adams between Kensington Ave and Marlborough took a while, bringing in office space and homes in their multipurpose units. Then there was the condo conversion next door, where two bedrooms that once rented for $700 were "upgraded" and sold for $476,000. Soon, the gas station across from me and the two houses next to it will be knocked out and more multi-use office and loft space will be built. My landlord has been offered a lot of money to sell, too, and she's held out thus far, but one day I'll be displaced to be sure.

One of the additions to Kensington in this development has been a Starbucks. I'm not a fan of coffee in general though I spent plenty of my high school years hanging out at Just Java or Café de Café or at my first job at Pronto Café. Starbucks has a knack for building stores adjacent, across the street, or diagonal across the street from established coffee shops. In my neighborhood, they moved in diagonal from San Diego Coffee Company at Kensington, the new name of the shop since Kensington Coffee couldn't compete. I've almost gotten over the Starbuck's...I know a lot of people like their standards and consistency, it's always busy, and non-customers enjoy the patio they've built. I won't, however, get over the traffic it's created on the corner, especially the assholes in SUVs who park in the red zone (because they are excluded from laws), then cut me off as I'm making my left turn onto Adams from Marlborough.

Regretfully, my problems may be minimized at someone else's expense. The people of Normal Heights will soon have their own Starbucks, conveniently (and I say that with the most sarcasm possible) diagonal from Lestat's. They booted out the Mexican produce market and have redisgned the corner. Now Jerry Sanders can get his coffee in Kensington without being harassed by the people from the other side of the 15 bridge; they can have their own hideous Starbucks to go to.

How they allowed this design to pass, I will never know. But just another step in the wrong direction.